Species Clause and Formes

Hi. This is the first time I'm posting in this (kinda dead) forum. I just wanted to bring up something that's been bothering me for a while now. I'm no good at writing big long paragraphs about serious matters, so I'll just throw it out now so that you know what I'm getting on at: I would like to abolish the fact that Pokemon of the same species but of different formes cannot be on the same team.

This is what I mean: Kyurem-W and Kyurem-B can be on the same team; Shaymin and Shaymin-S can be on the same team; Giratina and Giratina-O can be on the same team; Deoxys and Deoxys-A/D/S can be on the same team, etc.

However, I'm talking about FORMES, not FORMS. In my opinion, two Pokemon of the same species but with a different stat layout should be allowed on the same team. This means no multiple Sawsbuck, Rotom (more on this guy later), or Arceus forms, as seeing as they all have the same stats, they are essentially carbon copies of the same Pokemon, and thus truly violate the species clause, as you could just use all 4 forms of Sawsbuck to batter down counters to it and eventually sweep.

Rotom however is a difficult case. Following my previous logic, it goes without saying that I think Rotom and Rotom-A should be allowed on the same team, as not only do they have different stats, they have different typing. I'm unsure however as to my own ideas on whether or not Rotom-A's alternate forms should be allowed on the same team. While they do have the same stats, they have different typing themselves, and obviously they all have thier signature moves, which might distinguish them enough. However, they're still very similar to one another by virtue of role on a team, so I'd be interested to see what kind of discussion may come out of this.

As you can see from my previous examples, this policy of mine would above all affect the Ubers metagame. The ability to use a combination of alternate Deoxys or both massively powerful Kyurems, or the sheer bulk of the Giratina formes may turn the metagame upside down: I do not know. Therefore I suggest that we could establish a kind of tournament (along the lines of jrrrrrrr's DW Darkrai inclusion tournament, which I thought was a brilliant idea) and see what kind of effects my proposition would have.

It all boils down to this: in my book, Pokemon with different stats are different Pokemon, and thus I don't see why it's blocked by the species clause. For the sake of discussion, we could consider Latias and Latios to be alternate formes of one another, or the Hitmons. These guys all have nigh identical movepools and very, very similar stats; they could well be formes. But they're hardly broken when used on the same team together. What do you think?

I do not understand the distinction you are trying to draw between different types of formes. The different Arceus types, for example, transform in the same way that Giratina transforms (by holding an item), and the change in types makes the Arceus types play as differently as the change in stats makes the two Giratina formes play. Your logic appears to be that different stats make for different Pokemon, but different types make a similar difference; the Arceus formes are very much not "carbon copies" of each other.

No, that's true, I should have placed Arceus in the same boat as Rotom, as they're all obviously different from eachother. However, the thought of a team containing multiple Arceuses is... intimidating.

EDIT: not to mention nigh impossible to overcome. Whatever the outcome of my proposal, I simply don't think we should ever allow more than one arceus on a team

I doubt making this implementation would provide much of an impact in our metagame, but it does complicate the definition of Species Clause. You're basically saying that some formes can be treated as "different" species, while other formes (ie Rotom-A formes) are not. The freedom to compound your team's weaknesses by doubling up on these formes is not a big enough incentive to complicate the Species clause.

Also your definition of "same typing, diff stat distribution = formes" really questions the credibility of your request. To say Latias and Latios are essentially diff formes of a same species is like saying Infernape-Blaziken-Emboar, Tauros-Miltank, Omastar-Carracosta-Kabutops, etc. are formes of same species, simply b/c they share the same typings with diff stat distributions. This is a very flawed view of species and formes.

I don't understand why complicating the species clause is such a big deal. The way I see it, we obtain a more enjoyable metagame in exchange for a more complicated clause. It may be complex, but in the end I think it can only benefit us. Is our aim not to provide the most enjoyable metagame possible for the players? I honestly think that this outweighs the fact that the Species Clause becomes "uglier".

Pocket, I don't understand your second point at all. I would have thought it was obvious how similar Latios and Latias are to eachother; they are as similar to eachother as the Giratina formes. Think about it! One takes a more offensive approach, one a more defensive. It's just an example anyway. I didn't mean it the way you seemed to understand it, of course they're different Pokemon, but they're as different as some formes are to eachother.

C&C Leader

As TPCi and Game Freak start doing more and more to promote competitive battling (Battle [noun], GBU, VGC, Stadium-type games), it would be nice to keep definitions similar rather than different so that players (who will increasingly get their first taste of competitive battling by their rules) can come into ours without having the definition of the clauses completely changed on them. Especially if we're moving towards a "good enough, let's play the damn game" approach rather than analyzing every single aspect of our ruleset to attempt an unachievable "ideal" metagame.

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I really see no benefits of trying to change this either, there might not be any big downside to trying to hammer something out here, but there are bigger and better things that Smogon still needs to focus on atm.

You can obviously still do a tournament to try something like this out, nothing wrong there. Just don't expect whatever conclusions come out of it to actually change the Clause as it is.

As far as the Kyurem formes go, you can't legally have the black and the white formes together (or even more than one of each) on the DS games since you have to fuse Kyurem with a Reshiram or Zekrom, and the save file only has room for saving the necessary data for one such fusion.

This should probably apply to metagames with no species clause too, since this is a technical restriction.

I see that this has hardly any support, which I consider a shame. Although I admit I was unaware of the technical restriction of the Kyurem formes, so we can already exclude those. To those worried about how the ruleset would become uglier, I donàt really see the big deal. Couldn't the new species clause simply be:

"Pokemon of the same species with the same base stats are not allowed on the same team together".

Wouldn't that clear it up? Rotom and Rotom-A allowed on the same team, but not 2 or more formes of Rotom-A, not multiple Arceuses, but for example you could have all 4 Deoxys formes on an Ubers team, or both Giratina/Shaymin formes. The clause seems fairly clean to me, and not all that ugly to be perfectly honest.

Also, the way Wild Eep approached it is probably the best way to look at it. However, that also adds a question for the Ubers Metagame: Is it legal to have a Reshiram + Kyurem-W on the same team, since by definition, they are not the same species, but one is not legally able to obtain a Reshiram and a Kyurem-W at the same time in game without trading.

Also, the way Wild Eep approached it is probably the best way to look at it. However, that also adds a question for the Ubers Metagame: Is it legal to have a Reshiram + Kyurem-W on the same team, since by definition, they are not the same species, but one is not legally able to obtain a Reshiram and a Kyurem-W at the same time in game without trading.

This is because the B2/W2 save file only has the capacity to store the data associated with one Kyurem fusion (more specifically this has to do with retaining the information about the Reshiram/Zekrom used in the fusion).

Also as far as the "can't have two legendaries at the same time without trading" thing goes, I'm not following. I don't think anyone had issues with Groudon and Kyogre on the same team prior to Emerald.

Can we hammer out what the in-game Species Clause actually is before we try to have a discussion on it? This is one of the basic rules where "default to cart" is the only defensible argument I can see, unless there are a bunch of cases like that one from WildEep's post. I'm willing to amend the in-game version for our sake, for example by the simulators not allowing 5 Kyurems on the same team even though the cart technically might let you.

The ability to use a combination of alternate Deoxys or both massively powerful Kyurems, or the sheer bulk of the Giratina formes may turn the metagame upside down: I do not know. Therefore I suggest that we could establish a kind of tournament (along the lines of jrrrrrrr's DW Darkrai inclusion tournament, which I thought was a brilliant idea) and see what kind of effects my proposition would have.

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I think this is a great idea for a tournament, but I don't think it's the kind of decision that would be appropriate for a tournament to decide. The Darkrai tournament was to acquire logs so that we could vote on ladder testing one borderline pokemon. This is a sweeping rule change that would change an entire metagame overnight, especially in Ubers

Can we hammer out what the in-game Species Clause actually is before we try to have a discussion on it? This is one of the basic rules where "default to cart" is the only defensible argument I can see, unless there are a bunch of cases like that one from WildEep's post. I'm willing to amend the in-game version for our sake, for example by the simulators not allowing 5 Kyurems on the same team even though the cart technically might let you.

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No species clause I know of lets that happen. I was going for "can you have this combination of mons in your party at all ever". And I'm pretty sure you can have a Kyurem-B and five regular Kyurem in a party in-game. In anything with species clause, that's a no-go if only because there are too many normal Kyurem.